How busy people can use Parkinson’s law to get everything done up to 20X faster

I realize this essay’s title sounds exaggerated. It isn’t.

Two days ago, I wrote an essay in 8 minutes. Some of my early essays took 3+ hours to write. In other words, I achieved the same outcome with only 1/20 of the time investment. At first thought, it would be logical to think that the quality of these 3 hour essays was higher than the 8-minute one. However, they performed equally on Twitter.

Point is: even if the 3-hour ones would have performed slightly better, the fact remains that they didn’t perform 20X better, even though I invested 20 times more time into them.

Parkinson’s law says work will expand or squeeze into the time you set aside for it.

To a certain degree, Parkinson’s law works with all tasks. And while you won’t be able to write a 3000 word in-depth crypto coin analysis in an hour, you might be able to do it in three.

Parkinson’s law definitely works for tasks we already know how to execute. Like writing an essay by heart, without making any additional research.

How to use Parkinson’s law to your advantage:

1) Allocate barely enough time to a task you want to execute. It should be slim enough to make you feel stressed and get to work. Important — don’t set unrealistically slim time limits which make the task seemingly impossible. If you’re consciously or subconsciously believing you can’t make it in time, you will give up.

2) Make the time limit obvious. This is to stay focused and avoiding to succumb to distractions. I usually do this by placing a countdown timer right under my nose while writing essays.

3) Get to work.

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